How To Avoid Getting Sick When Everyone You Know Is Sick

I’m sick, everyone I know is sick–you’re probably sick too. A number of people I know were sick, then they got better and then got sick again within days. Whatever is going around is a plague of coughing, fatigue and that scratchy feeling of the throat. It’s a combination of the flu and the common cold and strep throat and chest infections et fucking cetera. It’s like a perfect storm of different sicknesses. This virulent epidemic is out of control.

If by some stroke of luck or wizardry, you have managed to avoid catching one of the numerous illnesses afflicting everyone else, you need to keep doing what you’re doing. Whether you’ve been deliberately hyper-vigilant to keep yourself healthy or you’ve just been lucky, the tim is now to become obsessively germ-averse.

Under normal circumstances, I would recommend regular hand-washing and vitamins and all the usual tricks to curb infection, but these circumstances call for extra prudence. Also, everybody knows the typical protocol. I want to take self-preservation against illness up a notch or a million.

Here are some real tips to help you avoid getting sick, no namby pamby “drink lots of water” nonsense:

Wear A Surgical Mask- If you’re only slightly committed, get a flimsy surgical mask and wear it whenever you are exposed to open air or other people. If you give more than the slightest fuck about your health, I recommend using a full Darth Vader helmet.

Suit Up In A Hazmat Suit- How else can you protect every inch of your body from hazardous materials?

Stay In A Sterile Panic Room- Go in there and do not leave until Spring comes and this wave of illness has totally passed. Don’t worry about getting lonely. Superman didn’t get lonely in his fortress of solitude. Maybe bring some comic books and movies into your isolation chamber.

The Bubble Boy Method- Sure it’s expensive to get a custom made bubble, but it’s also expensive to have the sniffles so hard that you need to stay home from work. You have to spend money to make money.

The Mariah Carey Method- Sleep for 14 hours a day and fill your boudoir with what idiots would consider and excessive number of humidifiers.

The GOOP Method- We’re talking about Gwyneth Paltrow in real life, not secret-smoker Margot Tenenbaum or her characters in Contagion (2011) or Se7en (1995). From here on out, you will read GOOP every day and treat yourself the way Gwyneth Paltrow treats her children. This will cost more than a tailor-made safety bubble and one hundred Hello Kitty themed humidifiers, but it’s very glamorous and effective. So much flaxseed oil.

Good luck. Let me know if you come up with anymore excessive precautions.

I love people who wear surgical masks in public for seemingly no good reason. Clearly I’m doing winter wrong.

Naomi

I’m a cancer patient and know a number of other patients who do wear surgical masks in public places to protect themselves from other people’s germs due to our borked immune systems.
But you know, not knowing people’s circumstances and making fun of them is anyway is, like, tee-hee so totes fun, amirite?

Kaitlin Reilly

Yeah, I wasn’t really making fun of anyone so I wouldn’t really know about that.
I do know several people who have told me specifically that they are wearing masks because they just “can’t catch a cold right now”.
Obviously, in situations where someone has a compromised immune system, it’s a real and very important precaution measure. I would never assume someone is wearing one because they are afraid of the common cold, but there are people who actually do this, and they should probably appreciate the fact that they don’t technically need to.
That being said, I’m sorry for your health issues and if this came off as insensitive. It was certainly not intentional.